President Obama is a fiscal hawk. I know that might sound strange to some of you (the sane ones), seeing as how Obama passed an $800 billion stimulus package, a record breaking, pork-laden $410 billion Omnibus bill, and a record breaking $3.55 trillion budget during the worst recession in 70 years. Yes, Obama will have a $1.8 trillion deficit his first year in office and is projected to run up more deficits than every other President in history COMBINED. Yes, we have committed up to $24 trillion to fight the recession, and Obama is trying to spend an additional $200 billion per year or so on health care reform, and he's only been in office for SIX MONTHS, for chrissakes....

But Obama is a fiscal hawk. Check it out. He has made good on his promise to trim $102 million from the federal budget. That's right. $102 Million with an 'M', as in, a drop in the ocean when Obama is spending trillions at the same time.

If you just broke into your own home by forcing open the front door, and then the police showed up to investigate after receiving a call from a passerby that two men wearing backpacks broke into your home, would you:

Following is President Obama's entire speech about health care reform wednesday night, along with my explanatory comments enclosed in brackets. Consider this is a public service. Note - I mostly comment on things I disagree with, or on things that set off my bs detector. Not always, but mostly.

Without further ado, here's our President (clap, clap, clap).---Good evening. Before I take your questions, I want to talk for a few minutes about the progress we’re making on health insurance reform and where it fits into our broader economic strategy. [Great, because I'm pretty confused about it]

When I talk to liberals about politics, I always come away thinking they are a few bricks shy of a load. I want to understand them, but logic invariably gets in the way. Maybe it's me. Yesterday, after a cocktail or three, I decided the only way I could ever identify with liberals was to become one, so I quit my job, signed up for food stamps and Medicaid, and started formulating a scam to collect SSI.

Everyone I know thinks the federal government is corrupt, that it is overly influenced by lobbyists, big campaign contributors, and other pay-to-play arrangements. Yet, inexplicably, about half of the folks who complain about these things, we'll call them Democrats for lack of a better word, want to see ever more and more power concentrated in the hands of that same corrupt federal government. This is roughly equivalent to saying "I know cigarettes will kill me. I think I'll smoke twice as much from now on." The same Democrats who thought President Bush's warrantless wiretapping of international phone calls from suspected terrorists following 9/11 was the most egregious overstep of governmental authority since the Russian Revolution now think it's perfectly fine that the government takes over vast sectors of private industry, from health care to energy to automobile companies to finance to everything else. The same Democrats who thought Bush's annual deficit spending was horribly irresponsible (it was) now think it's perfectly fine that President Obama is doubling those Bush deficits (it isn't). I will never understand.

Certain things defy explanation. For example, Bill Ayers went from being a domestic terrorist bomber for the Weathermen to being a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Chicago-Illinois. There is no rational explanation for how that happens, for how a radical like Ayers gets in a position to shape impressionable young minds when his proper place in society should be behind bars. It boggles the mind. There is a sense of unreality about it.

I had the same sense of unreality when I saw Al "Stuart Smalley" Franken (D-MN) sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the Sotomayor hearings. Stuart Smalley is the Distinguished Gentleman from Minnesota now. How did that happen ? How did Minnesotans decide Stuart was good enough, smart enough, and that, doggone-it, they liked him ? Some Republicans will tell you that Franken didn't really win the Minnesota election, and that IS a source of controversy (Minnesota counties didn't all use the same standard for accepting or rejecting ballots. We don't really know who won), but that's not the real reason Franken is in Congress today. The real reason Franken won with just under 42% of the popular vote is that three other candidates from three other parties (Independence, Libertarian, Constitutional) split off about 459,000 votes from the Democrats and Republicans. If not for the third parties, the vast majority of those votes would have been cast for Franken's opponent, Norm Coleman, giving him an easy victory. A substantial majority of Minnesotans (over 58%) did NOT vote for Stuart Smalley, which gives me a degree of comfort regarding the collective sanity of that state. I mean, you can convince 42% of Americans of almost anything. You can even convince them that Barack Obama is doing a good job of handling the economy, though the reality is, he's doing his level best to destroy it (tax increases, massive government expansion, anti-business policies, anti-free market policies, and anti-growth policies in the midst of the worst recession in nearly 70 years). There's a sense of unreality about that too. I feel like I'm watching the socialist endgame unfold right before my eyes.

I don't know why I thought the Sonia Sotomayor hearings would be interesting, but I did. Silly me. I forgot that our Supreme Court nominees don't have any opinions about Constitutional issues, other than the few that are so blatantly obvious that nobody could ever disagree (such as the Korematsu decision, which allowed for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Sotomayor thought that one was improperly decided. How bold). If you ask a Supreme Court nominee about any relevant issues, such as Kelo, FISA, Roe, the Second Amendment, etc., what you get back from the nominee is.....nothing. The nominee starts talking about settled law, stare decisis, and not prejudging any case that might come before him/her. They avoid giving an opinion. This is not unique to Sotomayor. Justices Alito and Roberts did the same thing during their hearings. What Supreme Court nominees have learned is what to say and what not to say in order to pass through the confirmation process successfully. They are coached on what to say and what not to say. They talk about process instead of philosophy, and they avoid ideology like the plague. They make every effort to appear as blank slates with no opinions of substance, because they know anything else will be used against them politically and could diminish their chances of being confirmed.

If you doubt that Sotomayor knows exactly what she is supposed to say and has been heavily coached in how to say it, consider this excerpt from her opening statement, which addresses literally EVERY potential Republican objection to her confirmation (i.e. empathy for one group over another, wise Latina woman judges reaching better verdicts than others, activist judges making policy) while at the same time rehabbing her previous comments.

Upon taking office, President Obama vowed to "restore science to it's rightful place."

Enter John Holdren, whom Barack Obama recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Holdren's informal title is Science Czar (and as you shall see shortly, "Czar" is definitely the correct description for Holdren).

I should be mature and resist the impulse to post this picture, but, hey, TGIF, and I just...can't...help...myself. Here's President O-bum-a channeling his inner Bill Clinton and checking out the backside of a curvaceous 17-year old delegate from Rio at the G-8 summit.

One of the talking points used by those favoring a single-payer health care system is that Medicare's administrative costs are FAR lower than those of private insurance companies. Here's liberal columnist and writer Joe Conason (whose latest book was titled 'The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth') parroting that point at Truthdig.com:

When the democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was removed from office by the Honduran military, President Obama immediately denounced it as an illegal military coup. Obama stated "our goal now is on restoring democratic order in Honduras." Obama was joined by a slew of others criticizing Honduras for removing Zelaya. United Nations chief Ban Ki-Moon called the Honduran actions "an unconstitutional change of power." The Organization of American States (OAS) issued an ultimatum to Honduras to either restore Zelaya within 72 hours or be suspended from the OAS. Latin Leftist leaders (dictators) are in an uproar and threatening violence. Cuba's Fidel Castro called the Zelaya coup "a suicidal error," and urged a reverse coup. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez pledged that "we will bring them [the new Honduras leaders] down," and said Venezuelan troops are on alert. Chavez, who in addition to being a Leftist strongman, is also a coked up lunatic, also blamed the USA for the coup, by saying the Honduran coup leaders "had Yankee support," though Chavez admits that Obama was against the coup (it must be that other US government that supported it). Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called on President Obama to stand firm against the Honduran coup (pretty ironic when only a few months ago, Ortega blasted Obama with a 50-minute long diatribe railing AGAINST the USA's interference in Central America).

With all this condemnation taking place, it's easy to forget what actually happened in Honduras. What makes it even easier to forget is that our media doesn't tell us what really happened there. They gloss over the details by saying something like "the military removed Zelaya shortly before a vote about term limits." Well, that doesn't quite cover it. There's more to that story. A lot more.

I suppose I should write about Sarah Palin resigning as the Governor of Alaska, since she's been the subject of wall-to-wall news coverage since friday. The teevee talking heads have been all atwitter with their uninformed opinions (they range from "Palin is an out-of-the-box genius thinker" to "Palin is an idiot").